Teen girl's pimp handed life term

Updated 12:33 am, Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Photo: Craig Kapitan/Express-News

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Kwaku Agyin, 21, listens to victim impact testimony Monday, moments after state District Judge Lori Valenzuela sentenced him to life in prison for murder. Agyin was also given shorter sentences for child sex trafficking, compelling prostitution and aggravated sexual assault of a child.

Kwaku Agyin, 21, listens to victim impact testimony Monday, moments after state District Judge Lori Valenzuela sentenced him to life in prison for murder. Agyin was also given shorter sentences for child sex

A San Antonio man convicted last month of pimping a 15-year-old runaway from Houston and luring her new boyfriend to his death was sentenced Monday to life in prison.

In addition to the maximum sentence for murder, prosecutors had asked that Kwaku Agyin, 21, receive seven consecutive life sentences for three counts of child sex trafficking, three counts of compelling prostitution and one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child. But one life sentence was enough, state District Judge Lori Valenzuela decided.

She sentenced Agyin to four 25-year sentences and three 20-year sentences for the other felony offenses. All but two of the sentences will be served concurrently, she ruled.

Jurors returned the guilty verdicts last month after the girl, now 17, testified that she was prostituted by Agyin for several weeks in September 2011 after running away from a youth detention center in San Antonio. She was already selling sex to survive on the streets but never wanted a pimp, she testified.

The teen's new boyfriend, Marcus Anderson, 35, had been trying to persuade her to sell drugs instead, and she went to police after Agyin ambushed him from a closet at the Skyline Motel, fatally shooting him.

Prosecutors pointed to additional accusations that Agyin verbally abused guards while in jail, had physically abused his ex-girlfriend and once shot at a rival drug dealer.

“There's really nowhere beyond capital murder for this defendant to go,” prosecutor Kirsta Melton said as she asked for the stacked life sentences. “He did it because he could — because it helped his street ‘cred.' There are no baser instincts.”

Defense attorney Mario Treviño called the sentencing request “ridiculous” and contended the teen started most of the troubles. Agyin's problems stem from the fact that his father, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center, and mother, a nurse practitioner, weren't prepared for the cultural shift of raising a child in San Antonio after immigrating from Ghana, he suggested.

Agyin's mother described him as “the type of spirit (that) captivates you and makes you excited about life.”